Stroger Now Gets His Chance

New Cook Chief Waited His Turn

There was no quibbling with that role as long as George Dunne was the godfather of the Cook County Democratic Party and Stroger his loyal disciple.

But it was a different story in 1990, when Stroger stepped aside in the name of party loyalty only to watch the regulars lose the County Board president's office to an outsider, Richard Phelan.

A different person would have cried foul and declared that this was the Cook County Democratic Party showing its racist side. Indeed, some did.

But not Stroger, not the good political soldier. Not the man who, as tempted as he might be to play the race card, has kept it in the middle of the deck.

It remained there in 1990 and even during this year's primary, when several white committeemen abandoned him in favor of Circuit Court Clerk Aurelia Pucinski.

During the campaign, which culminated Tuesday in Stroger's election as County Board president, the Democrat liked to say that he wasn't an African-American running for the president's post but rather a candidate for County Board president who happened to be African-American.

That he has refused to play racial politics has sometimes been costly this election year. Callers to black radio stations would roundly criticize his support of Richard Daley at the expense of Harold Washington. Opponents said Stroger couldn't be counted on to bring home the goods for the black community.

Still, last week the man who likes to consider himself a consensus builder proved he could attract many more voters than he could alienate. He won every ward in Chicago and finished with 46 percent of the vote in Cook County suburbs.

Building consensus certainly will be important for a County Board president who, for the first time, must deal with a board where members were elected from districts. In the past, members had been elected through a strange at-large system that allowed them to hide behind the relative obscurity of the office.

Serving a defined constituency could increase their public posture but also may force some members to become more parochial.

Now that Stroger has the office he's wanted for so long, the incentives certainly would be there to seek retribution against those aligned with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who supported Pucinski in the primary.

"Will John be out there punishing Democrats? Absolutely not," said William J.P. Banks, the alderman and Democratic committeeman of the 36th Ward. "He is one of the fairest men I have ever met."

That is not to say, noted Banks, that a bit of housecleaning won't occur, although most expect it to be gradual. Among the first to go, some insiders say, is Woods Bowman, Phelan's chief financial officer.

There also are some predictions that Stroger won't have a powerful chief of staff, as Phelan has had with William Filan.

But Stroger has given a vote of confidence to William Quinlan, a former appellate judge who has become one of Phelan's top advisers.

And some Stroger allies say they expect that the county's health-services chief, Ruth Rothstein, will be asked to stay on, at least for a while, to oversee plans to build a new County Hospital, one of Stroger's pet projects.

The new hospital project, which faces an important hurdle next month when plans are reviewed by state regulators, is expected to be a major focus of the Stroger administration.

Beyond the hospital and a proposal to build a new juvenile detention center to house the most violent young offenders, there doesn't seem to be much on Stroger's plate.

Indeed, during the campaign, he offered a modest platform that consisted principally of plans to enlarge existing programs to combat crime along with sketchy pledges to curtail the size of government and reform the way it is financed.

With a large lead in pre-election polls, Stroger had little incentive to make promises that could cripple his standing with voters. But those who know him say there is little that is more important to Stroger than his credibility. To make commitments he couldn't keep, whether because of financial or political constraints, would only jeopardize that credibility.

Still, some expect Stroger to emerge as a hybrid of his two predecessors. They say he has the consensus skills of Dunne yet, like Phelan, wants county government to take a more activist role, particularly in the area of developing early-intervention programs to attack the problems of juvenile crime.

Dunne was known for his political skills, his ability to build consensus and for being a frugal spender. Yet it was inaction during the Dunne years that ultimately forced the county to spend millions of dollars for new jails and to fix County Hospital. Both had fallen victim to years of neglect.

Phelan thought county government should serve a larger role, though his ambitions resulted in huge tax increases that ultimately helped cut short his political career.

In terms of political aspirations, Stroger will be more like Dunne than Phelan or Richard Ogilvie, two former County Board presidents who ran for governor, predicted county Democratic Chairman Thomas Lyons.

"He is interested only in being president of the County Board and not using the office as a launching pad for something else," Lyons said.